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Chapter 23

The Far Traveler fell through the warped continuum toward the yellow sun on one of whose planets Lode Ranger's people had found refuge. She was alone and lonely, with no traffic whatsoever within range of her mass proximity indicator. Distant Carlotti signals were monitored by Big Sister and, according to her, no ship was closer than the destroyer Acrux—and she was one helluva long way away.

Nonetheless Grimes was not happy. He said, "I know, Your Excellency, that with the advent of Carlotti Radio it is no longer mandatory to carry a Psionic Communications Officer—but I think that you should have shipped one."

"Have a prying telepath aboard my ship, Captain Grimes?" she flared. "Out of the question! It is bad enough being compelled by archaic legislation to employ a human yachtmaster."

Grimes sighed. He said, "As you know, PCOs are carried aboard all Survey Service vessels and in the ships of most other navies. They are required to observe the code of ethics formulated by the Rhine Institute. But today their function is not that of ship to ship or ship to planet communication. They are, primarily, a sort of psychic radar. How shall I put it? This way, perhaps. You're making a landing on a strange world. Are the natives likely to be friendly or hostile? Unless the indigenes' way of thinking is too alien your PCO will be able to come up with the answer. If The Far Traveler carried a PCO we should already have some sort of idea of what we shall find on Lode Ranger's planet. Come to that, a PCO would have put us wise to the state of affairs on Farhaven and saved us from a degrading experience."

"I would prefer that you did not remind me of it," she said. "Meanwhile we shall just have to rely upon the highly efficient electronic equipment with which this ship is furnished."

She finished her drink. Grimes finished his. Obviously there was not going to be another.

She said, "Don't let me keep you from your dinner, Captain."

Grimes left her boudoir and went up to his own spartan— but only relatively so—quarters.

 

Not very long afterward The Far Traveler hung in orbit about Lode Ranger's world. It was inhabited without doubt; the lights of cities could be seen through the murky atmosphere of the night hemisphere and on the daylit face were features too regular to be natural, almost certainly roads and railways and canals. And those people had radio; the spaceship's NST receivers picked up an unceasing stream of signals. There was music. There were talks.

But . . .

But the music bore no resemblance to anything composed by Terrans for Terran ears and the instruments were exclusively percussion. There were complex rhythms, frail, tinkling melodies, not displeasing but alien, alien . . .

And the voices . . .

Guttural croaks, strident squeals, speaking no language known to Grimes or the Baroness, no tongue included in Big Sister's fantastically comprehensive data bank.

But that wasn't all.

The active element of the planet's atmosphere was chlorine.

"There will be no Lost Colony here, Your Excellency," said Grimes. "Lode Ranger's captain would never have landed once his spectroscopic analysis told him what to expect. He must have carried on."

"Even so," she said, "I have found a new world. I have ensured for myself a place in history." She smiled in self mockery. "For what it is worth. Now that we are here our task will be to carry out a preliminary survey."

"Do you intend to land, Your Excellency?" asked Big Sister.

"Of course."

"Then I must advise against it. You assumed, as did my builders, that my golden hull would be immune to corrosion. But somehow nobody took into account the possibility of a landing on a planet with a chlorine atmosphere. I have already detected traces of nitrohydrochloric acid which, I need hardly remind you, is a solvent for both gold and platinum."

"Only traces," said Grimes.

"Only traces, Captain," agreed Big Sister. "But would you care to run naked through a forest in which there might be pockets of dichlorethyl sulfide?"

Grimes looked blank.

"Mustard gas," said Big Sister.

"Oh," said Grimes.

The Baroness said, "I am rich, as you know. Nonetheless this ship is a considerable investment I do not wish her shell plating to be corroded, thus detracting from her value."

"Yes, it would spoil her good looks," admitted Grimes. But the main function of a ship, any ship, is not to look pretty. He remembered that long-ago English admiral who had frowned upon gunnery practice because it discolored the gleaming paintwork of the warcraft under his command.

He asked, "Couldn't you devise some sort of protective coating? A spray-on plastic . . ."

Big Sister replied, "I have already done so. And, anticipating that you and Her Excellency would wish to make a landing, the smaller pinnace has been treated, also your spacesuits and six of the general purpose robots. Meanwhile I have processed the photographs taken during our circumpolar orbits and, if you will watch the playmaster, I shall exhibit one that seems of especial interest."

Grimes and the Baroness looked at the glowing screen. There—dull, battered, corroded but still, after all these many years, recognizable—was the pear-shaped hull of a typical gaussjammer. Not far from it was a dome, obviously not a natural feature of the terrain, possibly evidence that the survivors had endeavored to set up some sort of settlement in the hostile environment. A few kilometers to the north was a fair-sized town.

"Could they—or their descendants—still be living, Captain?" asked the Baroness.

"People have lived in similar domes, on Earth's airless moon, for many generations," said Grimes. "And the Selenites could always pack up and return to Earth if they didn't like it. Lode Ranger's personnel had no place else to go."

"But . . . To live among aliens?"

"There are all sorts of odd enclaves throughout the Galaxy," said Grimes.

"Very well, Captain. We shall go down at once, to find what we shall find."

"Big Sister," asked Grimes, "assuming that we leave the ship now, what time of day will it be at the wreck when we land?"

"Late afternoon," was the reply.

"We should make a dawn landing," said Grimes.

"You are not in the Survey Service now, Captain," the Baroness told him. "You may as well forget Survey Service S.O.P."

"Those survivors—if there are any survivors—have waited for generations," said Grimes. "A few more hours won't hurt them."

"I am going down now" she told him. "You may come if you wish."

Grimes wished that he knew more about Space Law as applicable to civilian vessels. When is a captain not a captain? When he has his owner on board, presumably.

He said, "Shall we get into our spacesuits, Your Excellency? We shall need them if we leave the pinnace."

She said, "I will meet you in the boat bay, Captain."

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Framed